A basic concept of an Ethernet virtual private network (EVPN) solution is that a control plane learns a media access control (MAC) address through extending a border gateway protocol (BGP), so that a layer 2 virtual private network (L2VPN) function is implemented. In the EVPN solution, each provider network edge (PE) needs to store all MAC address tables of a virtual private network (VPN) site, to which any other PE connects, so as to forward a data packet according to the stored MAC address tables. The PE may also be referred to as a multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) edge switch (MES).
However, with the development of cloud computing, a scale of a data center is continuously expanding, and the number of MAC addresses rises from levels of K (thousand) and 10K (ten thousand) to levels of 100K (one hundred thousand) and M (Mega). In the prior art, the solution that each PE is required to store all the MAC address tables has high demands for both capacity and performance of the PE.